Up Against It - M. J. Locke [158]
Xuan looked at him askance. “Multiply that figure by about a billion and you’ll come closer to the actual figure.”
The three youths all spoke at once: “What?” “That can’t be!” “Are you sure?”
He answered the last. “Not absolutely sure—there may be large pockets of vacuum. Have you explored? How extensive are the tunnels?”
“There aren’t that many,” Geoff said. “Most are sealed off.” He got a strange look on his face.
“With ice?”
Geoff nodded. “My God. You honestly believe this is a real live sugar rock, don’t you? I mean, like the original? Gigatons’ worth?”
“I think that is a very real possibility,” Xuan answered. “And Mr. Mills suspects likewise. I jury-rigged the gravitometer to suggest that this mine is still heavy with metals, not yet tapped out, but he did not trust my results.
“Eventually,” he said after a moment, “they will either use the big mining equipment up on the surface to dig in after us, or use explosives to ensure we can’t escape. They’ll want to know we’re good and dead.”
They all looked sick. “What can we do?” Kamal asked.
“We can’t fight heavy munitions,” Xuan replied, “but we can fight the men who wield them. Let us rest, and take stock, and we will figure out a plan.”
* * *
Once ensconced in Sean and Lisa’s guest room, Jane forwarded to Harbaugh the evidence of Glease’s meeting with Kovak, with a note: “As promised. Attached herewith, proof Nathan Glease was responsible for the ice disaster.”
Even if they managed to catch Glease, he—or the Ogilvies—would find a way to reach out and harm her, her family, or some other innocent Phocaean. So next she spent some time on the monitoring software the Viridians had given her. She created a macro she called DeadMan: the software saved the video stream to a private archive of hers here on Phocaea. Every ten minutes the macro requested a sequence of microgestures, and waited thirty seconds. If the gestures were not forthcoming, DeadMan then beamed the video to the usual wavesites and e-mailed it to the local news media. She tested it to make sure it worked. Then she went to sleep.
In the middle of the night, the bell rang. Jane lofted herself into the living room, half awake, and opened the door, expecting to see Xuan or Sean. It was Glease, standing in a dustfall of dying “Stroiders” motes. He had a gun pointed at her. Jane glanced at her heads-up—precisely two a.m. Of course; the blackout window. Her heartbeat leapt. She activated DeadMan with a flicker of an eyelid.
“I can’t begin to tell you,” he said, “how irritating it is, the way you keep interfering with my plans, Commissioner.”
Lisa came out of her room, belting her robe. “Is that Sean?”
Jane triggered the door lock and stepped into the corridor, forcing Glease to take a step back. “It’s business,” she said over her shoulder as the door slid shut. “Go back to bed.” The door latched behind her.
Glease gave her a tight little smile. “Fast thinking. Saves a mess.”
“Get to the point. What do you want?”
He tucked his gun into his jacket. “We’re going on a little jaunt.”
Jane pointedly looked around. They were on a Promenade level. Traffic was light, but a few people were out here and there and a trolley rattled past. “Why should I cooperate? Maybe you should just shoot me here and have done with it.”
“Oh, no. I have other plans for you. Besides”—he leaned close and whispered in her ear—“we have Xuan.”
He meant it. Her breath caught. “I’ll come.”
Glease took her up the Weesu stairwell to Level 60, and stopped at a private entrance to Kukuyoshi: the entry to the memorial garden. She went rigid as he keyed in a code. The door opened and he waved her in, but she refused to cross the threshold. “You have no right to be here.”
“Oh, come now,” he said. “You know the old saying. Might makes right.” He emphasized the verb, and shoved her, hard. She stumbled out into the clearing where the memorial had been held, flailing midair in the one-fifth gee till she could grab the limb of a nearby tree with a foothand. “That’s always been one of my favorite sayings.